The Look<\/em><\/p>\n A team of historians, statisticians, digital media and technology experts from Yale University turned a collection of old photographs into the digital humanities project, Photogrammar<\/em>, and created a website that is clean, easy and fun to use. The main page streamlines the data into three options: an abstract about the history of the collection, a map that compresses the collection and organizes it by state and year, and an interactive feature that lets you explore the photographs from California in depth and search photographs via a subject of interest. With the first tab, About the Collection<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>the user can read an informative synopsis of the history of the collection. Having a separate tab for textual information makes the entire site more aesthetically pleasing and allows the visual aspects of the website to stand out. With the second tab, Interactive Map<\/em><\/a>, the user can manipulate the presentation of the collection and organize it by a shaded map that indicates the number of photographs per county or a dotted map that indicates the location of particular photographers. Additionally, the map includes a slide feature that allows the user to select specific time periods for when the photographs were taken. The third tab, Photogrammer Labs<\/em><\/a>, allows the user to explore subject headings and sub-headings of photographs using Treemap (for example, the category of \u2018Work\u2019 can be narrowed down to the specific sub-heading \u2018Maple,\u2019 which contains around fifty photographs of maple tree harvesting) and offers a way to analyze the photographs in California by photographer, topic, year and location using the Metadata Dashboard.<\/p>\n The website is unique because of the variety of ways that the user can sort through the collection: by date, by photographer, by location, and by subject. It is also unique in its accessibility; it does not organize the photographs by words but by visuals, such as the Interactive Map and the Treemap. My only complaint is that once you choose either a location (through the Interactive Map) or a subject (through Treemap) the site does not let you organize the photographs further. For example, once the subject category of \u2018Husbands and Wives\u2019 is selected, the photographs in that sub-heading cannot be sorted further by location, photographer or date. However, overall, the Photogrammar<\/em> provides a useful access point and allows the user to sift through the photographs more precisely using the aforementioned visual search functions.<\/p>\n The Information<\/em><\/p>\n The pictures featured on this website document the era of United States history between the years 1935 and 1945 and record the relief work projects that occurred from the time of the Great Depression to WWII. In addition to organizing the photographs in the collection, I believe that Photogrammar<\/em> uses the collection to create an entirely new entities like the Interactive Map. Like Stephen Ramsay and Geoffrey Rockwell argue in \u2019Developing Things: Notes Towards an Epistemology of Building in the Digital Humanities, the technology of the digital humanities is an act of scholarship and can itself become an argument or theory. In the case of Photogrammar<\/em>, the website is a prototype for how digital collections should be organized and is an argument for what about a photography collection is important, namely, the photographer, location, date and subject of the photographs. Additionally, Photogrammar<\/em> engages in thick mapping, which HyperCitie<\/em><\/a>s<\/em> defines as \u201ccollecting, aggregating, and visualizing ever more layers of geographic or place-specific data,\u201d by placing categorical information about the photographs on top of a map of the United States and making a new entity that is an extension of the original collection. As an example of thick mapping, the layers of data in the Interactive Map add not only space-specific data (i.e. where the photograph was taken) but also time-specific data (i.e. when it was taken). In conclusion, the website does not merely organize photographic media sources, it builds a new media source with thick-map layering and organizational arguments.<\/p>\n In the terms of the representing the narratives of each picture, Photogrammar<\/em> falls short by leaving the photographs to tell the narrative of this federal government project by themselves. As briefly summarized in the About the Collection<\/em>, the federal government sponsored the widespread photography project featured on this website in order to introduce America to Americans and the spread support for the New Deal relief programs; thus, the entirety of this collecting is intended to highlight poverty and the effectiveness of work programs. As Nedra Reynolds<\/a> point outs, all maps are made by subjective authors and are not accurate mirrors of reality; similarly, the photographs in the collection and the entire digital project of Photogrammar<\/em> must be qualified by the subjective views of the photographers and creators. Despite the fact that the interface Photogrammar<\/em> does not tell the complete story of these photographs, it remains a useful tool for researchers interested in the period and a good platform for others to use as an example for a digital collection.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This graphic shows the ‘Photographer’ option for the Interactive Map.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Screen](\"http:\/\/dig360.shroutdocs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Screen-Shot-2014-09-11-at-11.35.39-AM.png\")
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